Immigrant laws are hotly debated With 2007 election results screaming at her and a 2008 reelection date looming, look for Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu to begin defying her party and ideology over the next 11 months. Her support for increased enforcement measures and new ones puts her in step with longtime supporter of these measures Republican Sen. David Vitter and the state itself, a refreshing change. It’s a no-brainer but rejected by most of her Democrat colleagues who don’t really care about making it more difficult on illegal immigrants and in fact want to preserve or increase benefits these non-citizens receive. Even though these preferences hurt a constituency to which Democrats pay lip service but whom, outside of its organized aspects, they do nothing for – labor – Democrats seem to think aggressive enforcement of borders and keeping benefits only for Americans and legal immigrants will hurt them in the ballot box (perhaps as they wish to make voters out of illegal immigrants). Landrieu with few exceptions has acted contrary to Louisiana’s interests on a variety of issues from economics to foreign policy to free speech and lots of things in between. But in the last year of her term, her strategy will be to veer from the left to center to con Louisianans into thinking she is not a solid liberal. This issue may mark the start. She will be aided by the Democrat leadership. Out of touch with America’s real needs and Americans’ real interests for decades, upon taking the Senate last year they totally misunderstood that the lesson of the 2006 elections was not a change in governing philosophy, but in execution. But thinking the former rather than the latter, they stupidly put forth dramatic policy changes in the direction of liberalism that have gone nowhere, including on the issue of illegal immigration. As the election season wears on, they will decrease such things to make their party’s candidates look more mainstream and in tune with America. This means there will be less pressure on Landrieu to cast liberal votes that will remind voters in Louisiana who she really is. But Landrieu will succeed in winning a third term if her Republican opponents don’t expose her record. Both Vitter in 2004 and Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal this year have shown that publicizing a solid conservative record can win statewide in an open field. However, running against an incumbent, Republicans will have to take the additional step in 2008 of preventing Landrieu from pulling the wool over peoples’ eyes by showing she is just a moderate of convenience. (If you'd like to have Prof. Sadow's column mailed to you, go to http://www.between-lines.com and click on "Join the mailing list!" on the left-hand side.)
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Does Gautreaux win represent EBR political shift? Much attention has been given to displacement effects of the 2005 hurricane disasters in Louisiana, particularly in Orleans Parish but also, to a lesser extent Jefferson and St. Bernard. As I mentioned yesterday, this has created interesting dynamics in Orleans Parish, which confirms the thought that Democrats are disproportionately disadvantaged in statewide contests. But another interesting consideration is whether a substantial portion of those displaced ended up in East Baton Rouge Parish and thereby could mitigate the Democrat disadvantage. Census data released earlier this year showed New Orleans had lost of age 20 and up almost 129,000 black and about 40,000 white residents from 2005 to 2006. At the same time, of East Baton Rouge of residents of that age blacks gained over 15,000 while whites were virtually identical in total. Assuming whites split between Democrat and Republican, 80 percent of blacks register as Democrats and 10 percent Republican, and further assuming 55 percent of blacks of age register to vote, this means about 50,000 Democrat votes were lost in Orleans and about 6,000 gained in Baton Rouge – in other words, not much compensation. (Of course, in 2007 some more have trickled back to Orleans from Baton Rouge and out of state.) Registration and election returns verify Baton Rouge gains won’t provide much Democrat cushion. From the end of 2005 to just prior to the 2007 primary elections, whites had been reduced on the rolls by about 3,000 and blacks increased about the same. In the 2003 sheriff’s primary election, about 116,000 participated, while in the same 2007 election about 118,000 voted in an election whose turnout was down slightly from the previous four years because even as white turnout was about the same black turnout was down about 6 percent, which questions the speculation that blacks or even Democrats may have made a pivotal difference in that parish’s 2007 contests. These numbers means that perhaps half of presumably displaced blacks in the parish typically expected to actually did register to vote, implying that some may return to Orleans and/or have disengaged from the electoral process. It also may mean there is fertile ground for recruitment but only a few thousand votes for statewide purposes could be added. Knowing they may have “lost” a few thousand less voters than anticipated may make Democrats feel better, but it does little to reverse the major long-term problem they face of declining numbers in Louisiana. (If you'd like to have Prof. Sadow's column mailed to you, go to http://www.between-lines.com and click on "Join the mailing list!" on the left-hand side.)
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Election results reflect racial shifts Perhaps an item that slipped by the consciousness of observers was election results in New Orleans that contradicted long-held conventional wisdom about race and voting. In several plurality-black constituencies, non-blacks were elected which is a reversal of past trends. More intriguingly, you had white candidates winning in majority-black constituencies because black crossover voting exceeded white crossover voting – and this could have consequences for upcoming statewide elections. In House districts in New Orleans, among the four plurality (but not majority) black districts, three white candidates won. (And in the 102nd, Democrat incumbent Jeff Arnold, white, won again in his majority black district). Parish/city-wide, an at-large council seat and Criminal Court judgeship were won by whites where black registrants outnumber whites by almost double. Most interestingly, rough estimates of voting show that white voters in contests pitting a white and black candidate were only about half as likely to vote for the black candidate as blacks were to vote for the white candidate. This is highly significant because with very few exceptions the ratio typically has been in the reverse in Louisiana urban elections – as shown in New Orleans only last year with its mayoral election. If victories for white candidates came about because of lack of black numbers because of 2005 hurricane displacement, that is interesting. But because, at least in the city-wide races, crossover voting that showed less solidarity among blacks than whites which was the margin of victory for white candidates truly is astounding, contradicting much of the literature explaining elections in urban America that consistently have shown whites are more likely than blacks to cross over racial lines in voting. Whether this will have an impact on the 2008 election for the Senate is another matter. Larger-than-normal black crossover voting, it must be noted, applied only to white Democrats, so it well may not apply to one or more white Republicans running against incumbent white Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu. By way of example, black voting for southeast Asian Indian Republican Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal ran within norms in Orleans at about 10 percent. Still, this represents an intriguing potential trend. In all probability, it may be a factor of individual candidacies specific to this election and may not play out as a permanent kind of shift. If it were to, one possible explanation would be that displacement disproportionately affected lower-income individuals, disproportionately black Democrats, who would be less likely to defect from monoracial voting. Future election results will confirm whether this is a blip, or a new phenomenon awaiting study and explanation. (If you'd like to have Prof. Sadow's column mailed to you, go to http://www.between-lines.com and click on "Join the mailing list!" on the left-hand side.)
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Voters surprised election analysts I know some people who refuse to leave home after dark on New Year’s Eve because they argue it’s “amateur night” for partiers and therefore their chances of a motor vehicle accident not their fault increase dramatically. We see a similar dynamic with elections when those not accustomed to reporting about politics end up doing it, and in doing so create wrecks of their own when it comes to analysis, aided in part by some unsustainable assertions that do not accurately assess the impact of party and incumbency in the 2007 legislative elections. What is one to do with the published statement “Louisiana voters may have put less emphasis on party labels in Saturday's general election and more on individual candidates, challenging pre-election predictions and showing a different dynamic at the polls?” Anybody trained in analyzing political parties and elections at the state or local level, or who have watched them in action attentively around these parts, or who have done both, knows the highly personalistic political culture in the state de-emphasizes partisan politics perhaps more than anywhere else in the Union. I don’t recall seeing anything in print about how partisanship as an attitude would play a much magnified role in the 2007 elections, and it’s no surprise that its impact, as always, was small. (Especially considering only 4 Senate and 12 House districts of the 144 total even have pluralities of Republican registrants – 11 percent – yet 15 Senate and 50 House Republicans get elected, 45 percent of the total.) Further, “Prior to the election analysts had said they expected a Republican-majority would be in the Louisiana House of Representatives, which was anticipated following Republican Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal's victory in the October primary.” I must have missed these “analysts’” statements: certainly I wasn’t among them as I gave my prediction last week on WIST’s “Inside New Orleans” with Eric Asher as 54 to 55 Democrat or leaning-Democrat House wins (54 actual). Not only was there little expectation the GOP could take the House after Oct. 20, a month before qualifying Republicans were conceding the enterprise would be a longshot. In the end, we’re left with these words of wisdom: “I think the main thing is that local races and representative's district are localized, and party did not play the dominant role or the stronger role as we expected.” No, you don’t say! With such weak political parties, in Louisiana seldom are local parties, even if they had the will, able to make much of a difference at all in an election, and the state parties must be very selective with limited resources to intervene in these kinds of affairs. Knowledge of these aspects makes it hard to understand why anybody would have expected much different. Nor were the mistakes limited to the presumed pre-election prognosticating. Concerning the results themselves, it was argued the results “showed a marked voter disregard for a candidate's experience in office.” That’s …
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Republicans try to take control of state House It wasn’t Republicans’ wildest dreams met in the general election runoff for Louisiana state offices, but it should satisfy those partisans and supporters of Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal, and put conservatives and reformers in a good position to get needed public policy changes enacted. At the beginning of the night, for the House the Democrats needed to win 8 of 17 contests to have a majority will Republicans had to win 11. Actually, one GOP-leaning representative already was in the bag while one of the contests was Democrat vs. Democrat-leaning independent, so among the partisan-only contests, the Democrats effectively needed only 7 of 16, and the Republicans 10 of 16. The Senate already was in Democrat control with 22 seats with 4 contests outstanding. In the Senate, a couple of seats swapped and the other tow held, leaving a small overall GOP pickup of 1 at 15 seats. For the GOP to win the House, however, it would have to make a lot of pickups and couldn’t quite do it. Even as two of its candidates won by fewer than 100 votes, it lost several contests decided by two or three times that margin. While Republicans did pick up several Democrat-held seats and cracked 50, they lost one narrowly and just missed having a plurality in the chamber. Even so, it appears the GOP will run things in the House. Republican State Rep. Jim Tucker declared even prior to the polls closing that he has enough votes in the House to be named Speaker (with the blessing of Jindal), meaning a majority of committee chairmen also will be from the GOP. There are enough Democrats willing to jump on the Jindal bandwagon either by inclination or from knowing they won narrowly this year to give Republicans and Jindal a working majority. Therefore, the Senate may be Jindal’s great obstacle. Fortunately, the budget process, where the philosophical difference between the parties is the greatest, begins with the governor and then goes through the House. The Senate is left in the most reactive role to it and thus magnifies Jindal’s line-item veto power when it comes to capital outlay. Still, because of the Democrats tenacious hold on the Senate even as 5 of 7 statewide officers are Republicans and the GOP has a working majority in the House, this will make the bolder and more needed Jindal agenda items such as tax cuts and spending reallocations potentially difficult to get enacted. Jindal will have to display some prime political skills to accomplish things many hoped he could do when voting for him. “Reform” governors almost always have lost in reelection bids, and compounding this effort for Jindal is he promises the cleanest break ever from the politics of the past which had dragged Louisiana down. In fact, even tougher than overcoming legislative opposition may be ensuring expectations of what he can do with …
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November 16, 2007….The race to replace Governor elect Bobby Jindal in Congress will be one of the most competitive and expensive congressional races in recent history. The First Congressional District is the most conservative area of the state, with voters evenly split between the north and south shores of Lake Pontchartrain. Never before has a north shore resident been elected to this seat and never before has there been a better opportunity. The Governor has set the dates for the election. Party primaries will be held on March 8, followed by party runoffs on April 5 and the general election on May 3. This will be the first time in 30 years that there will not be an open primary in the congressional race with all candidates running in the same election. On the GOP side, the race for Congress is going to be very crowded. Already several prominent politicians have announced their candidacy. Several weeks ago, former Governor and Congressman Dave Treen officially declared his interest in running for Congress. Treen has not been in elective office for 23 years, although he has run for a variety of political positions in the last few years. Treen is a respected leader in the Republican Party who is considered the father of the Louisiana GOP. Nevertheless, many voters might consider him too old at 79 years of age to run for a position with such a heavy workload. State Senator elect Steve Scalise (R-Metairie) is telling friends that he is running as well. Scalise served for 12 years as a State Representative and was just elected to the State Senate in October with 61% of the vote. Scalise will also be helped by former congressman Bob Livingston who will serve as Chairman of his campaign. Scalise will be a very formidable candidate and certainly one of the favorites in the race. In 2004, Scalise briefly ran for this seat, only to step aside for Bobby Jindal, who was eventually elected in a landslide victory. This week, State Representative Tim Burns (R-Mandeville) announced his candidacy. Burns was just elected to his second term in the legislature. He has been known for his conservative views on a variety of issues such as school choice, insurance reform and fiscal accountability. Burns received the 2007 St. Tammany Parish Legislator of the Year Award from the Alliance for Good Government. Also, Slidell Mayor Ben Morris, a Republican, has announced his candidacy. Morris has received high marks for his leadership of the city post-Katrina and won an overwhelming re-election victory in 2006. Morris is the former Police Chief of Slidell and has been known for his sharp tongue. For example, he labeled the ACLU the “American Taliban” when the group filed a lawsuit regarding the picture of Jesus hanging in the lobby of the Slidell City Court. The big question is whether Republican St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis will run. Davis was just elected to another presidential term with close to 80% of the vote. Davis …
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Campaigning continues In a wide-ranging news conference just days before Saturday’s election for the Louisiana Senate, state Rep. Coach Montgomery denied he alone was responsible for the sun rising in the east, but made it clear that almost anything else good that had happened in the state and in his district over the last 20 years was his doing. The Republican Montgomery looks to move his legislative career over into the Senate after five terms in the House. “While I have supported term limits, we can’t let something as inconsequential as the will of the people or the spirit of the law get in the way of my continued service to this district, of which I lived in for about a year and moved into just so I selflessly could help out these people.” He further likened his inconsistency of that issue to his party switching from Democrat a year ago. “I want to reassure my former Democrat partisans that I still will reliably vote for liberal positions – I switched for purely political reasons, not because I changed my mind on anything – and that’s why you need to vote for me over the genuine conservative,” he argued. Although in this term in office his pro-family voting record as measured by the Louisiana Family Forum, and his pro-growth record as measured by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry show more pro-family and pro-growth records than not, he pointed out that in the years previous he had miserable pro-family, pro-growth records that should reassure these voters. However, he quickly cautioned that Republicans and conservatives also needed to vote for him. “Look at the few conservative votes I have made over the years, and forget about the rest of my voting record,” he advised to them. “Spending a half-million bucks of largely special interest money on campaigning highlighting these should convince you of my sincerity,” he noted. “And, if you think what I’ve just said about being a Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal are inconsistent, you’re wrong. I am consistent because I’m consistently inconsistent, which makes me principled and trustworthy.” He specified an example of his commitment to consistent inconsistency, when he reminded, “I was the deciding vote that passed the Stelly tax – for which I refuse to apologize or say I was wrong – which has siphoned more money out of Louisianans than any tax increase in the state’s history, but just five years later as I prepared to run for this office I proposed legislation that would have raised the sales tax in exchange for getting rid of the Stelly income tax increase, and later voted for some minor reductions in it. So I voted for the Stelly Plan before I voted against it – how in any way is that not inconsistent?” He also pointed out the prodigious service he had performed over the past two decades in leading Louisiana to a better quality of life. “I’m proud to say …
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Senate, House seats on runoff ballot Reformism and Republican conservatism were the watchwords of the 2007 Louisiana primary elections, and each side of the Red River gave us a dose of one or the other. On the Caddo side, a set of predictable races surprisingly made the Senate District 38 race the most interesting. Incumbent Republican Sherri Smith Cheek has one of the most liberal/populist voting records of Senate Republicans, and even in the entire Senate, but with her campaign coffers awash in funds from special interests, particularly the health care industry where she has fought to keep state priorities away from more efficient, individual- and community-based care in favor of more wasteful spending favoring institutionalized care, it was not expected that an unknown Republican reformer, attorney Alan Seabaugh, would give her much competition. But despite being outspent about three to one, Seabaugh, who relentlessly placed himself as a genuine conservative, reform-minded alternative to her, nearly knocked off Cheek whose total expenditures approached the $200,000 level. He came within 300 votes of her in Caddo Parish but only got 40 percent of the vote in the smaller-populated DeSoto Parish part of the district. This should serve as a shot across the bow to entice Cheek to alter her voting record in a more conservative direction. Up against a more experienced, higher-quality candidate she well may have lost, and the outcome should encourage tougher competition against her in 2011 if she does not change. As interesting was the role Republican Party identification played on the Bossier side of the river. Of course, the vast majority of candidates in the parish now avoid the Democrat label; electoral prospects have gotten so bad for them that longtime Democrat stalwart Wanda Bennett didn’t even sign up for the Police Jury District 3 under the party label for which she had labored for decades, choosing to run as no party (a tactic pioneered on the Jury by District 10 member Jerome Darby). It worked, for she defeated a Republican. Maybe Coroner Rita Yanez Horton should have followed that lead. The incumbent ran as a Democrat against newcomer John Chandler and was blown out. Democrat District 5 juror Henry Mitchell might have benefited as well, getting upended by a Republican, Barry Butler. Outside of state Sen. Robert Adley’s brushing off a college-aged longshot and longtime member Winfred Johnston getting reelected, the Republicans triumphed up against Democrats. But perhaps the most significant demonstration of the power of the GOP label came in a contest of two Republicans the House District 9 tilt between School Board member Henry Burns and education official Richey Jackson. Despite Burns having switched from the Democrats only months before, the parish GOP endorsed Burns, who ended up winning by less than 100 votes. Although a party endorsement doesn’t mean much in Louisiana, in a race that close, it probably made the difference. The intriguing collision of reformism and Republican conservatism impends appropriately (the …
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In just a few short weeks, Louisiana’s new Governor-elect has gone from being an ideologue to a practical politician. From perception of image to the realities of dealing with the political process. Bobby Jindal’s primary victory was a first for a non-incumbent as far back as anyone can remember. He received an overwhelming mandate. Some observers feel in was too big. For with his win, Jindal has raised the stakes on himself. He will be under the gun in his first few months to not just talk the talk; but to walk the walk. In short, he will need to produce. His call for a special session on ethics reform in January is a start. The new Governor has spent the past two years hammering on his view that Louisiana’s reputation of having a high tolerance for corruption has kept many new businesses from locating in the Bayou State. Jindal will certainly push for stronger financial-disclosure requirements for legislators as well as lobbyists, and a ban on elected officials receiving state contracts. And with Louisiana ranked 44th out of 47 states that require disclosure filings, he has a good case to make. The question he has yet to address is whether to tackle stronger limitations on the receipt of campaign contributions. Louisiana's campaign financial disclosure laws are filled with loopholes, allowing contributors to make numerous contributions through corporations, limited partnerships, and any other type of financial entity. In short, as we saw in the first primary in statewide and legislative races, a single individual can find a number of ways to contribute large sums of money way beyond the listed limitations. Governor Jindal will not be able to declare victory and a new beginning without addressing the issue of individuals and companies contributing large sums to candidates at ever level in the state. His first step should be to ban corporate contributions to political campaigns, as many other states (including Texas) have done. The second would be to adopt some of the reporting standards now in place under federal election laws, particularly requiring contributors to list their employers and whether or not their employers serve as government contractors. You can talk about ethics all you want, but without stronger limitations on the massive campaign spending in Louisiana, real reform will be little more than window dressing. Author Walter Mosley, appearing on a C-SPAN Book TV program last weekend, and commented that most Americans now understand that politics is dominated not by Democrats or Republicans, but by what he called "the Money Party." As a result, a large number of people have no faith in either party to respond to their real needs. Considering that in our most recent election, Louisiana had its lowest turnout in decades, the state certainly fall into this number. Right now, Louisiana has loopholes in its campaign finance laws you could drive a truck through. If the new Governor limits his ethics reform proposals to disclosure and limitations on just elected officials, he will give the …
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Jindal's choice Republican Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal I take to be a sincere, honest person but there are two things I think he’s held back on. One was his assertion that he really didn’t commit to running for governor until the last year or so, rather than not long after his 2003 losing effort. The other is that he would remain uninvolved in the selection for Legislative leadership after his 2007 victory. As I suspected not long ago, Democrat state Sen. Joel Chiasson emerged as the body’s choice for its president – even though not all of the votes are in since several incoming members’ identities remain up for grabs until after this weekend’s election. Given the other announced competitors – Democrats Joe McPherson and Robert Adley – and that there will be a moderate majority of Democrats in the body, Chiasson was by far the best choice for Jindal to succeed in getting his agenda of ethics reform and fiscal restructuring of the state through the Senate. Neither McPherson nor Adley were suited in any way to help Jindal’s agenda. The former consistently advocated against restructuring health care to make it more efficient and effective, while the latter almost single-handedly torpedoed lukewarm ethics reform and resisted sufficient tax reduction in the last session. Chiasson has been much more open to these ideas. Jindal said when he personally announced Chiasson had secured a majority of the Senate votes, that “We’re not here selecting a Senate president. Rather, we’re here confirming the Senate’s choice.” One wonders if “confirmation” consisted of Jindal operatives quietly informing senators that McPherson (who after the Oct. 20 primary proclaimed he already had secured enough votes to win) or Adley simply were unacceptable to Jindal, leading the rush to anoint Chiasson. That certainly would explain McPherson’s face-saving claim that he didn’t make promises like Chiasson did, causing a presumed loss of support; it’s highly unlikely, or entirely naïve, of McPherson having not done the same to win support (and he was doling out campaign funds to some candidates, which doesn’t seem too different from promising committee positions). In fact, McPherson and Adley may get cut out of leadership in all. If Jindal really did exert some backroom influence, even indirectly, it will become evident if the majority of chairmanships go Republicans’ way and McPherson and Adley are cut out entirely (although McPherson’s current chairmanship of Health and Welfare is likely to be inherited by the Republican version of him, Republican vice chairwoman Sherri Smith Cheek who is no bargain to reform efforts). This announcement further solidifies expectations that Republican state Rep. Jim Tucker will assume the House speakership. Whether Republican any majority party there likely will not have much of a majority to be able to force one of its partisans on the chamber, and if Jindal is flexing political muscles he will want a Republican speaker to balance a Democrat president. (If you'd like to have …
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